In addition to the usual wireless telephony that cellular telephones provide, such devices are also widely used for sending short text messages (under the name Short Message Services or SMS) between wireless users.
More recently new devices and supporting network services are being introduced that allow more general class of messages to be sent between wireless devices, where the messages include voice, still images, and even moving images. Standards have been introduced for such services including Multimedia Message Services (MMS) and Enhanced Message Services (EMS).
However, as attractive as such new services are to users and wireless network providers, they require new and expensive wireless devices, of which few have been deployed to customers, as well as extensive additional network capabilities. Further, these new services do not inter-operate with existing SMS services in a seamless manner.
In view of the foregoing discussion there is a need for a system that can overcome the drawbacks of these new services and provide comparable advanced capabilities using only the inexpensive devices and networks currently available to support standard text SMS and that seamlessly inter-operate with SMS services.
Further, the disclosure herein is not limited to wireless phones but will also work with wireline phones with SMS capabilities and services over such wireline devices.